China United Telecom (China Unicom), a major communications operator in the country, said its net profits last year stood at 2.842 billion yuan (355 million U.S. dollars), up 15.0 percent from the previous year, Friday's China Securities Journal reported.

Quoting the company's yearly report, the newspaper said China Unicom earned 76.1 billion yuan in business income, a growth of 7.6 percent from the previous year.

China Unicom, one of the major blue chips in Chinese stock market, announced in the report that it would start its split share structure reform in the first half of this year.

The split share structure refers to the existence of both tradable shares and a large volume of non-tradable shares owned by the state and legal persons. To make all their shares tradable, listed companies participating in the reform have to offer additional shares or funds to public investors as compensation.

According to the report, the China Unicom got an income of 72.89 billion yuan (about 9.11 billion US dollars) from its mobile phone service, 3.22 billion yuan (some 402.5 million US dollars) from distant data exchange and internet service.

Source: Xinhua